


i promise i'll do better

by xinzui



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, M/M, Rogue One Spoilers, yes it's everyone's favorite trope: sharing a bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8878570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xinzui/pseuds/xinzui
Summary: And at night, if either of them wakes up with tears on their faces, it hardly means anything if the other puts an arm around them and holds them until they fall asleep again.
They escape from Scarif. Cassian adapts.





	

Bodhi, Cassian notices, is very quiet on the way back to Yavin 4.

He leans against the side of the ship and watches Bodhi rubbing vigorously at his goggles with his fingers, trying to scrub off dirt that doesn’t exist. At the back of the ship, Jyn is fast asleep, her head on Chirrut’s shoulder. Chirrut murmurs to Baze in a low voice, clutching Baze’s hand tightly in his own.

Cassian watches Bodhi for a moment longer, watches the shell-shocked expression on his face, watches the vague uncertainty in his eyes. He sits down next to Bodhi and silently hands him a clean cloth. Bodhi looks at him, a little taken aback but grateful, and accepts it.

 

All of them are welcomed as heroes when they arrive back at the Rebel base. Bodhi stays in Cassian’s room the night before they are to be formally commended for furthering the Rebel cause. Cassian sleeps on the floor.

“Have you thought about what you will do after this is over?” he asks that night, staring up at the ceiling that he’s stared up at for many a long night, unable to sleep.

“I don’t know,” Bodhi replies quietly. Cassian looks over to see Bodhi staring at him from the bed, eyes wide and luminous even in the low light. “I’ve never had a choice before. What do you think?”

Cassian swallows, feeling nervous under Bodhi’s intense gaze. “We could use a man with your skills, is all I can say. But it’s your decision to make.”

“My decision,” Bodhi repeats, and rolls over to face the wall.

As Cassian stands the next day, ready to receive his medal, he wishes it would be over so he can go back to work.

Bodhi stands to his left, jittery as always, and Cassian can tell that he has the urge to clean his goggles (which Senator Mothma insisted be removed for the ceremony). He glances down at Bodhi’s fingers, which tap incessantly against his side, and catches them with his own hand. Bodhi looks down, then looks at Cassian and smiles – tentative, cautious, thankful. Cassian squeezes his hand gently and looks back out at the crowd.

 

Bodhi stays. Chirrut and Baze stay, too.

Jyn does not. Cassian finds her at the landing bay, walking towards a ship with her bag slung over her shoulder. He grabs her by the wrist and she turns to face him, an expression of guilt marring the steely determination on her face when she sees that it’s him.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Jyn says. “Anywhere I want to go, I suppose.”

“You weren’t going to say goodbye.”

“I was afraid of what you’d say if I did.”

“I will miss you,” Cassian says, letting go of her wrist. “You should stay.”

Jyn sighs quietly. “I’m not cut out for this, Cassian. This whole freedom fighter thing – we just barely escaped with our lives the first time. I’m not prepared to risk it a second.”

It takes Cassian a moment to reply. “I understand.”

Even if he doesn’t.

Jyn smiles, a tiny and bittersweet thing, and steps forward to throw her arms around Cassian’s waist. Cassian wraps his arms around her and thinks about the last time they were in this position, when they were preparing themselves for the end of the world.

It feels just the same.

She steps back, turns, and then there she goes – disappearing into space before Cassian can blink. He’s still staring up at the sky after she’s long gone.

She leaves her medal in his back pocket.

 

Bodhi sleeps in Cassian’s room from then on. It’s not so much because there isn’t another room to put him in and more because Bodhi requests it and Cassian can’t say no.

Cassian will often be woken in the middle of the night by the sound of Bodhi jolting awake from another nightmare, breath coming in shallow, shaky bursts. Bodhi will stretch his hand over the side of the bed and Cassian will take it without question, clutching it tightly until Bodhi’s breathing evens out and not letting go when he drifts off to sleep again.

“This is a silly arrangement,” Bodhi remarks one day, leaning against the door of the fresher and scrolling through Cassian’s data-pad as Cassian brushes his teeth.

“How so?”

“You can’t keep sleeping on the floor. This was your room first. Tell me the Rebellion has spare beds lying around somewhere.”

Cassian spits into the basin. “Not enough space in my room to put another bed in. And the floor is not so bad.”

“Ridiculous,” Bodhi proclaims. “It can’t be comfortable down there.”

“I have made my peace with it,” Cassian replies.

He sees Bodhi roll his eyes in the mirror and smiles.

That night Bodhi extends his hand over the side of the bed to Cassian again and tugs gently when Cassian takes it. Cassian pauses, then complies.

They don’t talk about how Bodhi’s arm ends up over Cassian’s chest in the morning.

 

Bodhi, as it turns out, is a natural at piloting a U-Wing. Cassian is there to see his smile when he steps out of the U-Wing and whips his helmet off after his first flight. It’s real, bright, fleeting – Cassian would be lying if he said he doesn’t get a certain thrill from it.

He takes to meeting Bodhi whenever he lands, liking how alive Bodhi looks after every flight. Bodhi seems to like it, too, already-bright eyes lighting up whenever he sees Cassian standing in the bay under the guise of logging equipment.

“Captain,” Bodhi always says, grinning and windswept.

“Officer Rook,” Cassian always replies, smiling down at his data-pad.

They fall into it – Cassian goes to meetings and Bodhi runs drills in the U-Wing, but Cassian is always there when Bodhi comes back. And at night, if either of them wakes up with tears on their faces, it hardly means anything if the other puts an arm around them and holds them until they fall asleep again.

 

“Thirty years, huh?” Cassian says, gazing down at the photo Chirrut had pressed into his hand, of Baze and Chirrut as young men. They're smiling. “That’s very impressive.”

Chirrut smiles, unseeing eyes seeming to stare directly at Cassian. “I feel lucky that we met when we were young. When _he_ still believed in the Force.”

Baze snorts. “Don't.”

Chirrut laughs quietly and reaches his hand out. Baze takes it without looking.

“I’m happy for you,” Cassian says. “Will you be doing anything to celebrate?”

“Perhaps not publicly,” Chirrut replies. “Baze does not want to make a fuss about it.”

“Fair enough,” Cassian says, leaning back in his chair and smiling. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you very much, Captain,” Chirrut says, and his eyes are piercing.

 

“You ever think about them?” Bodhi asks that evening when Cassian comes back after a trip to the fresher, perched on the desk in Cassian’s room and tinkering with spare parts. Cassian pauses, closing the door behind him.

“Think about who?”

“Baze and Chirrut. I saw you talking to them in the mess hall today.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Cassian says.

“I don’t know,” Bodhi mumbles, sounding like he regrets bringing it up as he stares intensely at the spare parts in his hands. “They’re something special, is all. I just haven’t – never mind.”

Cassian watches Bodhi carefully and thinks about the Empire and the past that has Bodhi constantly waking in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat. “The Empire didn’t encourage emotional attachments, I guess?”

Bodhi shakes his head quickly.

“Of course I think about them,” Cassian says, walking forward to stand before Bodhi and crossing his arms. “Love like that is admirable.”

“Is it selfish to want it?”

Cassian is struck by the reality of it, by how tired Bodhi’s eyes are as he lifts his gaze to look at Cassian with the same inquisitive stare that he had on that first night. Cassian swallows, his mouth very dry all of a sudden.

“No, not at all.”

“Oh,” Bodhi utters, barely a word and more of an exhalation, eyes still trained on Cassian’s face. Cassian’s gaze, unable to resist, drops to his slightly parted lips. Bodhi’s knees are – if Cassian takes another step –

Then Bodhi retreats back into himself and Cassian steps back, feeling faintly dizzy, as though some sort of gravitational pull has released its hold on him. As he sits down in the chair next to the desk he doesn’t stop thinking about Bodhi’s mouth.

 

As it always is with the Rebellion, the security doesn’t last.

Cassian’s been on missions since they returned from Scarif, but they’ve never been anything too wildly out of his wheelhouse.

“Undercover? In _Dantooine?”_ Bodhi exclaims incredulously when Cassian tells him. “They can’t be serious – Senator Mothma does know that it’s an _Imperial base,_ doesn’t she?”

“It’s only for a few days to gather intel,” Cassian replies, leaning on the desk. “I won’t be gone very long.”

“Oh, no, Cassian, we’re wanted men across the galaxy,” Bodhi says, standing up frantically. He takes his goggles off his head and begins polishing them furiously as he starts pacing around the room. “They’ll recognize your face – or something – or they’ll just _know_ you’re Rebellion and kill you without hesitation – how does the Senator think that sending you will be a good idea?”

“Bodhi,” Cassian interrupts, stepping forward to grab Bodhi by the shoulder. Bodhi stops dead in his tracks, chest rising and falling quickly. “Look at me.”

Bodhi complies. Cassian holds his gaze for a moment before speaking again: “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“And if you aren’t?”

“Don’t think about that,” Cassian says, tightening his grip. “I’ll come back.”

Bodhi stares at him with a raw vulnerability that breaks Cassian’s heart and that he decides he never wants to see again.

“Please believe me,” Cassian says lowly, and feels Bodhi’s shoulders begin to relax under his hand.

“Alright,” Bodhi replies finally. “Yeah, alright – you better not be lying.”

 

“Good luck, captain,” says the man piloting the drop ship. Cassian smiles faintly.

“Thank you, sir.”

Cassian recalls loud noises, the sound of people screaming, and then nothing at all.

 

The medical bay is very white and very bright. Cassian’s been here plenty of times before but he’s never realized how intrusive the light is. Blinking, he sits up and comes face to face with a young medic with a sweet face and a worried look in her eyes.

“How are you feeling, Captain?”

“I don’t know,” Cassian replies shakily, lifting a hand to touch the cloth wrapped around his head. “I don’t know, I – what happened?”

“You were pulled from the base by the backup on standby,” she says, checking his vitals. “Someone must have known you were coming. There was a bomb. Went off when you got in.”

Cassian groans and closes his eyes. “Bodhi.”

“What’s that?”

“No-one, nothing, I just – when can I be discharged?”

The medic looks at him, skeptical. “Not for another few days, I’m afraid.”

Cassian's heart sinks in his chest. Bodhi must be so worried. “Can I just go now? Not for long - just -”

“Senator Mothma gave the order,” the medic says, shrugging.

“Please,” Cassian says, and something in his tone makes her expression change. “Let me go – just for a little while. I’ll come back. I just need to – I need to do something.”

His medic clenches her jaw, then nods tautly.

Bodhi is sitting on their bed and polishing his goggles when Cassian opens the door and stumbles in, feeling slightly light-headed. Bodhi looks up quickly and his jaw goes slack, his face pale.

“Bodhi,” Cassian starts. Bodhi stands, moves across the room swiftly, grabs the front of Cassian’s jacket, and kisses him.

And if Cassian was feeling light-headed before, that’s nothing compared to now – the door shuts behind him as Bodhi backs him up against it, insistent and gentle all at once; Cassian feels his heart leap as Bodhi pulls back momentarily to brush a strand of stray hair from Cassian’s face with aching tenderness before leaning in to kiss him again, slower this time but with just as much feeling. Cassian’s arms have found their way around Bodhi’s waist and Bodhi’s hands are on his face by the time they break apart.

“I’m sorry,” Bodhi murmurs. “I’ve been – worried. And maybe a little bit – er. Pent-up.”

Cassian smiles softly. “Please don’t be sorry. Where did you learn to kiss like that?”

Bodhi clears his throat and steps back, straightening his jacket. “Definitely not with this other pilot that I met on cargo runs sometimes.”

Cassian laughs and thinks that, as he watches Bodhi lean down to pick his goggles up, he could definitely be in love with someone like him.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @rookbodhi


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